Saturday, October 25, 2014

Offensive Dominance Quotient

This summer Mike McCarthy and Aaron Rodgers' declared their goal of speeding up the offense and running 75+ plays per game. Play fast, keep the defense from substituting, keep it pedal to the metal. To this point in the season, after seven games, the Packers have run 410 offensive plays, a 58.5 play average. Now, I'm no mathlete, but I think that's about 20 plays less than McCarthy's target. The result? A 5-2 record and 28.4 points per game, good for 4th in the NFL.

So despite not achieving the play per game goal set this summer, the Packers' offense is humming right along at a nice clip. In reality, it is almost unreasonable to expect Rodgers to run that many plays per game when he is throwing the ball to Jordy Nelson who simply refuses to be bothered by defenders and just decides to score when he touches the ball.

Now that the Packers are closing in on the halfway point of the 2014 season, I think it is a good time to review where they are now and adjust some of the goals and measurements for the second half of the season. Self-reflection and analysis are traits of a healthy and successful organization and also traits of highly successful individuals.

While a target of 75 plays per game should remain a goal, I don't believe it to be the best measuring stick for Mike McCarthy to judge his offense. I have to believe that since the Packers have only achieved this benchmark once, yet remain successful, there must be a better metric to use to evaluate an offense's success, say an Offensive Dominance Quotient-ODQ (I made that up. Just now. Kind of like some intern at ESPN made up QBR on his lunch break.)

ODQ is an extensive set of statistics, formulas and algorithms designed to exactly measu...bwahahaha...just kidding. Like I said, I'm no mathlete. I couldn't even wake up for my 9 a.m. stats class, so ODQ is about as superficial as you could get. It is simply a tally of....{drum roll}....the number of snaps that the Packers' backup quarterbacks play in a game in relief of Aaron Rodgers. When QB1 has directed the team to a sufficient enough lead where McCarthy is able to send in Matt Flynn, as was the case versus Minnesota and Carolina, victory is imminent, and the Packers' offense has been dominant.

I look forward to seeing more Matt Flynn in relief mode during the course of the season. In fact, I would challenge Mike McCarthy to make Scott Tolzien active on all game days. When you are able to send in TWO backup quarterbacks to close out a game, your ODQ is roughly the size of a Twinkie 35 feet long and approximately 600 pounds.

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